As we researched the ways people use MailChimp, we learned that our customers spend a lot of time managing their lists and subscriber profiles. So we set out to improve the layout and functionality of subscriber profiles. With New MailChimp, you’ll be able to scroll horizontally to reveal all your fields and hide columns that aren’t relevant for you. We’ve also made it easier to access subscriber and list information from a mobile device, which we’ll show you in this video.

Here’s a peek at the new subscriber profiles:

If you’d like to see more previews of what’s coming, check out our other New MailChimp posts.

If you ever tried to segment a list by engagement, you may have wondered about our member-activity rating. I’m talking about the little stars that look like restaurant reviews for your subscribers. I’m not sure how five-star restaurants get their rating, but I suspect it’s a little different than email.

To come up with a member rating, MailChimp tracks open and click data and measures that against your sending frequency. Actually, we get a lot of questions about these little stars and how exactly a two star subscriber becomes a five star subscriber. To find out how the sausage is made, we’ll need to look at the code behind member ratings.

Our five star system is based on a twenty point activity score, and we weight those activity scores unevenly. An even distribution might be good for my OCD, but loading activity points around four and five stars ensures that high engagement is easily remembered while low engagement is easily forgotten.

Read More

Tofugu is a self-described “wonky blog about the Japanese language and culture” based out of Portland, but they’re more than that. The three gentlemen behind the site also help people learn Japanese via their online textbook, Textfugu, and their kanji learning application, WaniKani. “Learning a language is so hard,” Tofugu founder Koichi says. “Especially if you aren’t motivated to do so. Once you’re motivated, it’s a lot more fun and you really feel like you’re doing something great.”

To help Tofugu’s customers feel great, Koichi investigated MailChimp’s autoresponders. Inspired, he started crafting simple, motivational nuggets to send to new learners in the hopes they wouldn’t get discouraged. “The content is really varied,” he says. “Sometimes it’s a ‘get off your ass’ sort of email. Other times, it’s a ‘Did you know this is how people actually learn?’ sort of email. I try to write things that would motivate me.”

Read More

Before we got into the thick of designing New MailChimp, we did a lot of research and studied the ways our customers work. We were reminded that our customers are under tight deadlines, and when they log in to MailChimp, they don’t have a lot of time to put together a campaign. So we looked for ways to increase efficiency and shave time off of the campaign creation process. We eliminated design elements that didn’t serve a purpose, and reorganized the campaign creation part of the app to make sure the information is clear, useful, and only there when you need it. We think it’s going to help speed up your workflow so you can spend less time in our app.

Here’s a peek at New MailChimp’s campaign creation process and campaign dashboard:

If you’d like to see other previews of what’s coming, we’re releasing a series of blog posts and videos that go into a bit more detail found here: New MailChimp

When first I started working at MailChimp four years ago, I had never even coded an HTML email. Sure, I’d been involved in web design since the late ’90s, but emails are a different beast altogether. The learning curve was steep, in large part because documentation on the “art” of HTML email was scattered at best. There wasn’t a one-stop spot to get people up to speed.

When it comes to email development, the prevailing attitudes are confusion and frustration. We want to help change that. That’s what drove us to start this project, and now we have an HTML email reference to share with you.

Read More